Black Sunday

 1.5/4

Starring: Robert Shaw, Marthe Keller, Bruce Dern, Fritz Weaver, Steven Keats

Rated R (probably for Violence)

The poster for "Black Sunday" who's a giant blimp crashing into a stadium, sending fans running to escape its wrath.  It's a bold and dramatic image.  It's also far and away the only thing noteworthy about this snoozer of a thriller.

The plot is a dopey, standard order adventure story.  A duo of terrorists, Dahlia (Keller) and Lander (Dern), are planning to attack the United States, and Kabakov (Shaw), the dogged Israeli agent who figured it out, is raving against time to stop them.

I know that's a shallow plot description, but that's as deep as it gets.  Which makes director John Frankenheimer's decision to take nearly two and a half hours to tell this story all the more bizarre, since it's easily an hour longer than can be justified.  Pacing is crucial to a thriller, and taking so long to tell such a silly story does not do the film any favors.

One of the film's flaws is the decision to "humanize" the characters.  That might work if the story had any weight or the characters developed in any interesting ways, but that's not the case.  They're.cliches.  Attempts to give them "depth" fail.  The writing isn't there and the actors can't sell their lines, although Robert Shaw gives it a game try as a past-his-prime Dirty Harry.  Martha Keller switches between ice-cold beauty and strung out neurotic with such frequency that I'm amazed that she was able to keep me believing that this was the same woman.  Bruce Dern just acts like a nutcase, and in so doing bears a strong resemblance to Gary Busey.

A movie like this needs to have a clear hero and clearer villains.  But Frankenheimer muddies the waters without successfully giving them complexity.  For example, spending time detailing the relationship between Dahlia and Lander does nothing but waste time.  Neither is fleshed out or original enough for anything that happens between them to mean anything.  It's just an hour trapped with the Bickersons.

The effort behind the camera is no better.  Not only is the film overlong, it's not able to generate much in the way of tension.  The direction is pedestrian and the hackneyed editing doesn't allow any suspense to build.  Even the climax is hampered by poor editing.  Sometimes it feels like it was run through a leaf shredder.

The once consolation is that there is a stunt during the climax that is kind of exciting.  But that's the only praise I can really give it.

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